abandonware games sorted by popularity

Tomahawk is an early helicopter flight simulation that puts the player behind the controls of a military aircraft and expects them to take the job rather seriously. Navigation, wea...

Released in 1994 for DOS, Iron Cross is a historical strategy game that tries very hard to make military planning look sexy. Spoiler: it doesn’t. You’re dealing with Wo...

Fire and Forget: Final Assault is the kind of game that asks a very specific question: “What if driving a heavily armed car was your full-time job?” Released in 2013, i...

UnReal World is a survival experience that takes its premise very seriously, perhaps more seriously than you expected. First released in 1992 and evolving over time, it places you ...

Strike Commander is a high-speed flight simulator that combines fighter combat with a surprisingly ambitious campaign structure. You fly missions, manage your aircraft and take par...

Forget piracy—China Sea Trader makes hauling porcelain and spices across 19th-century Asia feel like a cutthroat business. It’s part economic sim, part geography lesson...

The Curse of Monkey Island is one of the great comic adventure games of the late 1990s, combining pirates, absurd puzzles, memorable characters, and enough terrible puns to sink a ...

Port Royale is a 2002 trading and strategy game that lets players experience the life of a merchant in the Caribbean during the age of sailing ships. Instead of becoming a legendar...

If Risk and Excel had a baby during WWII, it would be Clash of Steel. You command nations, move armies, manage production, and try to stop history from repeating itself—usual...

Ever wondered what The Flintstones would look like if they got into illegal street racing? BC Racers is exactly that, with stone-age muscle cars, power-ups that make zero sense, an...

World Games is a collection of unusual sporting events designed to prove that the Olympics did not have a monopoly on strange ways of hurting yourself. Instead of concentrating on ...

Night Raid is a 1992 action game that puts the player into a dangerous nighttime mission where enemies, darkness, and poor life choices are likely to be waiting around every corner...

Nitemare 3D is a 1994 first-person shooter that takes the basic idea of exploring dark corridors and adds monsters, weapons, magic, and enough supernatural unpleasantness to make t...

In Auf Wiedersehen Monty, our favorite marsupial is back, and this time he's taking a very pixelated Eurotrip. Released for Windows XP in 2001, it's a nostalgia-fueled platformer t...

ELIZA, created in the mid-1960s by Joseph Weizenbaum at MIT, was one of the first computer programs to simulate human conversation. Designed as a natural language processing demons...

Before Doom became the 3D gore-fest we all know, there was Return to Doom—and no, it has nothing to do with space marines. This 1988 title is more Choose Your Own Adventure t...

Ah, 3D-Maze. If you used Windows 3.x, you probably saw this lurking in the corner of your screen savers like a digital minotaur. Released in 1991, it’s not quite a game, but ...

Normality is a first-person adventure video game developed by Gremlin Interactive and released in 1996. The game is set in a dystopian future where a totalitarian regime known as t...

Silent Service 2 builds on the submarine simulation formula with a more detailed representation of underwater warfare. Players command a World War II submarine, navigating patrol a...

Into the Eagle's Nest from 1987 is a top-down action game where stealth and gunfire coexist in uneasy partnership. Players infiltrate enemy territory, rescue prisoners, and survive...

Pitstop 2 is a 1984 racing game that focuses on endurance driving, strategy, and the surprisingly important task of maintaining a vehicle during competition. Players race around tr...

If holiday cheer could be bottled into pixels, HappyLand Adventures: X-mas Edition would probably come with a candy cane aftertaste and a mild sugar rush. This cheerful platformer ...

Fievel's back, and this time it’s personal. An American Tail: Fievel Goes West lets you step into the little cowboy boots of everyone’s favorite Russian mouse as he tri...

Based on Anne McCaffrey’s novels, Dragonriders of Pern (1987) is an odd duck. It tries to blend diplomacy, strategy, and a dash of action into one package. You don’t ju...

If you've ever dreamed of throwing darts, arm wrestling, or playing a sleazy round of "Last Call Larry" without actually smelling like stale beer, Bar Games is your digital dive ba...

Take Eddie Murphy’s swagger, remove the charm, add some DOS chiptunes, and you get Beverly Hills Cop—a game adaptation that asks: “What if being a wisecracking de...

Fleet Command invites you to command modern naval forces with the calm authority of someone who definitely read the manual. This is strategy on a grand scale: radar screens glowing...

Tempest 2000 is a video game developed by Llamasoft and published by Atari Corporation. It was released in 1994 for DOS, Mac, the Atari Jaguar console, etc. Tempest 2000 is an enha...

Beach volleyball rarely received much attention in classic gaming, making Kings of the Beach a refreshing surprise. Fast-paced matches combine accessible controls with enough tacti...

Arnhem is the kind of wargame where you spend more time reading hex maps than shooting anything. It’s all about recreating Operation Market Garden — you know, that WWII...